Autocatalytic replication of polymers
Physica D
Complexity
Merging the energetic and the relational-constructive logic of life (poster)
ALIFE Proceedings of the sixth international conference on Artificial life
John von Neumann and the evolutionary growth of complexity: looking backward, looking forward …
Artificial Life - Special issue on the Artificial Life VII: looking backward, looking forward
Complexly Organised Dynamical Systems
Open Systems & Information Dynamics
Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata
Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata
On What Makes Certain Dynamical Systems Cognitive: A Minimally Cognitive Organization Program
Adaptive Behavior - Animals, Animats, Software Agents, Robots, Adaptive Systems
Adaptivity: From Metabolism to Behavior
Adaptive Behavior - Animals, Animats, Software Agents, Robots, Adaptive Systems
SETN '08 Proceedings of the 5th Hellenic conference on Artificial Intelligence: Theories, Models and Applications
Enactive artificial intelligence: Investigating the systemic organization of life and mind
Artificial Intelligence
Integrating Autopoiesis and Behavior: An Exploration in Computational Chemo-ethology
Adaptive Behavior - Animals, Animats, Software Agents, Robots, Adaptive Systems
Simulation model for functionalized vesicles: lipid-peptide integration in minimal protocells
ECAL'07 Proceedings of the 9th European conference on Advances in artificial life
ECAL'09 Proceedings of the 10th European conference on Advances in artificial life: Darwin meets von Neumann - Volume Part I
Norm-establishing and norm-following in autonomous agency
Artificial Life
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In the search for the primary roots of autonomy (a pivotal concept in Varela's comprehensive understanding of living beings), the theory of autopoiesis provided an explicit criterion to define minimal life in universal terms, and was taken as a guideline in the research program for the artificial synthesis of biological systems. Acknowledging the invaluable contribution of the autopoietic school to present biological thinking, we offer an alternative way of conceiving the most basic forms of autonomy. We give a bottom-up account of the origins of "self-production" (or self-construction, as we propose to call it), pointing out which are the minimal material and energetic requirements for the constitution of basic autonomous systems. This account is, indeed, committed to the project of developing a general theory of biology, but well grounded in the universal laws of physics and chemistry. We consider that the autopoietic theory was formulated in highly abstract terms and, in order to advance in the implementation of minimal autonomous systems (and, at the same time, make major progress in exploring the origins of life), a more specific characterization of minimal autonomous systems is required. Such a characterization will not be drawn from a review of the autopoietic criteria and terminology (à la Fleischaker) but demands a whole reformulation of the question: a proper naturalization of the concept of autonomy. Finally, we also discuss why basic autonomy, according to our account, is necessary but not sufficient for life, in contrast with Varela's idea that autopoiesis was a necessary and sufficient condition for it.